Women Raise Their Voices in New Iraq

Women Raise Their Voices in New Iraq

Fear of lawlessness has kept many Iraqi women at home since the war to oust Saddam Hussein. But some are organizing to reverse a decade-long erosion in women's rights, even as Islamic radicals flex their muscles. Women have mostly stayed off the streets since US-led forces toppled Saddam on April 9 and left a power vacuum that criminals freed en masse before the war were swift to exploit. Iraqis swapped tales about abductions, rape, armed robbery and carjacking. Families would not let their daughters attend school. Women, who hold many jobs in government offices and health facilities, stopped driving or going to work. Two months on, security in Baghdad has improved somewhat, but the old sense of personal safety is missing. A few women are back at the wheel. Those working again head home by noon. The power vacuum also created space for Muslim militants to try to impose strict Islamic laws and dress codes that many urban Iraqi women see as threatening their personal freedoms. Some of them are working with the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to try to ensure that women carve out a better position in the new Iraq than they had in the old. "We need to pull women out of their homes and plunge them into all areas of life," Iraqi human rights activist Safia al- Souhail said. No one knows how many women there are in Iraq, which urgently needs a census, but some estimates say they make up more than 60 percent of the population because three wars in two decades have killed so many Iraqi men. Backward Lurch Iraqi women say their status improved in the first two decades of Baathist rule, but things changed for the worse after the 1991 Gulf War. More than 12 years of UN sanctions impoverished all but a few privileged Iraqis. Many families favored sons over daughters in areas such as education. "Women paid a heavy price after the sanctions. Education of women dropped from 92 percent in the mid-1980s to 69 percent in the 1990s, which meant one in three women did not attend school," said Ghada Kachachi of the UN Children's Fund. Saddam, shaken by post-Gulf War revolts against him, sought to bolster his position by an "Islamisation" campaign, which included laws that struck at some fundamental women's rights. "We want to cancel some legislation. For instance, a 1992 law bans the foreign travel of a woman if she is not escorted by her father or husband. An Iraqi woman married to a non-Iraqi can't give her children her nationality," said Awatef al-Aswad, a woman who works in finance. Women said they had also suffered increasing job discrimination in government ministries in the 1990s, though exceptions were made for female Baath party members. The combined impact of these changes was profound. "The sanctions and some of the regime's discriminatory laws led to a rise in women's illiteracy, to early marriages and to a deterioration in women's liberties," said Lina Aboud, a doctor teaching at al-Kindi Pharmaceutical College. The US-British administration is keen to encourage women to step forward and claim their place in postwar Iraq and has made sure they are represented in its political consultations. "It took quite a long time to move women on to the political process because they had been oppressed for 35 years," said Julie Chappell, a CPA official. Chappell said the CPA was trying to help women regain confidence and prepare for a women's conference on July 6. "They were more worried about urgent (postwar) needs such as security, electricity, water, gas, but it's much easier now." She said Iraqi women had set up five committees to draft ideas for key areas in which they want a say -- the constitution, education, health, economy and law. Some women were also talking to moderate Shi'ite Muslim clerics about how to secure the withdrawal of edicts on strict Islamic law issued by their militant colleagues. Nermin Othman, education minister in what has been an autonomous Kurdish administration in northern Iraq since the 1991 Gulf War, said women's experience there could be a model for their sisters in the rest of the country. "In Iraqi Kurdistan, women have full rights and freedom of speech and organization. We have cancelled some discriminatory laws and introduced new legislation that ensures their rights." Othman said Kurds had worked hard to reduce violence against women and had set up shelters for battered women. A woman now has the right to divorce an abusive husband, and honour killings are treated legally as violent crimes. "We are trying now to upgrade the status of Iraqi women to that of Kurdish women," Othman said.